A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In September 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau told Congress that it had at least $305 million in budget savings out of its $4.5 billion fiscal year 2000 no-year appropriations for the 2000 decennial census. Of the $4.5 billion appropriated to the U.S. Census Bureau in fiscal year 2000, lower-than-expected expenditures and obligations resulted in available balances of at least $415 million. A lower-than-expected support staff workload reduced salary and benefit costs by about $348 million. Enumerator workload is largely determined by the initial mail response rate for returned census questionnaires. The initial mail response of 64 percent meant that Census enumerators did not have to visit more than three million American households. However, the available balances from the higher mail response rate and the lower support staff workload were partially offset by about $100 million of higher salary and benefit costs for enumerators, including a higher workload for unanticipated recounts. According to Bureau data, enumerator productivity did not significantly affect budget variances for the 2000 decennial census. The Bureau reported the national average time to visit a household and complete a census questionnaire was about the …

Recently, we have benchmarked and tuned the MILC code on a number of architectures including Intel Itanium and Pentium IV (PIV), dual-CPU Athlon, and the latest Compaq Alpha nodes. Results will be presented for many of these, and we shall discuss some simple code changes that can result in a very dramatic speedup of the KS conjugate gradient on processors with more advanced memory systems such as PIV, IBM SP and Alpha.

The cost of dynamical quark simulations with improved staggered quarks is estimated based on current and planned running by the MILC collaboration. I find that a few 10s of Tera op years should be sufficient to calculate down to a lattice spacing of 0.045 fm.

It is possible to retrieve a large fraction of soluble waste from the Hanford single-shell waste tanks (SSTs) by dissolving it with water. This retrieval method will be demonstrated in Tanks U-107 and S-112 in the next few years. If saltcake dissolution proves practical and effective, many of the saltcake SSTs may be retrieved by this method. Many of the SSTs retain flammable gas that will be released into the tank headspace as the waste dissolves. This report describes the physical processes that control dissolution and gas release. Calculation results are shown and describe how the headspace hydrogen concentration evolves during dissolution. The observed spontaneous and induced gas releases from SSTs are summarized, and the dissolution of the crust layer in SY-101 is discussed as a recent example of full-scale dissolution of saltcake containing a large volume of retained gas. The report concludes that the dissolution rate is self-limiting and that gas release rates are relatively low.

It is possible to retrieve a large fraction of soluble waste from the Hanford single-shell waste tanks (SSTs) by dissolving it with water. This retrieval method will be demonstrated in Tanks U-107 and S-112 in the next few years. If saltcake dissolution proves practical and effective, many of the saltcake SSTs may be retrieved by this method. Many of the SSTs retain flammable gas that will be released into the tank headspace as the waste dissolves. This report describes the physical processes that control dissolution and gas release. Calculation results are shown and describe how the headspace hydrogen concentration evolves during dissolution. The observed spontaneous and induced gas releases from SSTs are summarized, and the dissolution of the crust layer in SY-101 is discussed as a recent example of full-scale dissolution of saltcake containing a large volume of retained gas. The report concludes that the dissolution rate is self-limiting and that gas release rates are relatively low.

The Tevatron is the world's first large superconducting accelerator. With its construction, we gained the dual opportunities to advance the state of the art in accelerator technology with the machine itself and in particle physics with the experiments that became possible in a higher energy regime. There have been 43 experiments in the Tevatron fixed target program. Many of these are better described as experimental programs, each with a broad range of physics goals and results, and more than 100 collaborating physicists and engineers. The results of this program are three-fold: (1) new technologies in accelerators, beams and detectors which advanced the state of the art; (2) new experimental results published in the refereed physics journals; and (3) newly trained scientists who are both the next generation of particle physicists and an important part of the scientific, technical and educational backbone of the country as a whole. In this book they compile these results. There are sections from each experiment including what their physics goals and results were, what papers were published, and which students have received degrees. Summaries of these results from the program as a whole are quite interesting, but the physics results from this program are too …

New understanding, theories, and techniques for moisture flow and distribution were developed in this research on wood and wood fiber. Improved understanding of the mechanisms of flake drying has been provided. Observations of flake drying and drying rate curves revealed that rate of moisture loss consisted of two falling rate periods and no constant rate drying period was observed. Convective heat transfer controls the first period, and bound water diffusion controls the second period. Influence of lower drying temperatures on bending properties of wood flakes was investigated. Drying temperature was found to have a significant influence on bending stiffness and strength. A worksheet for calculation of the energy required to dry a single strandboard flake was developed but has not been tested in an industrial setting yet. A more complete understanding of anisotropic transverse shrinkage of wood is proposed based on test results and statistical analysis. A simplified mod el of a wood cell's cross-section was drawn for calculating differential transverse shrinkage. The model utilizes cell wall thickness and microfibrillar packing density and orientation. In spite of some phenomena of cell wall structure not yet understood completely, the results might explain anisotropic transverse shrinkage to a major extent. Boundary layer …

The author discusses methods based on the large Nc expansion to study nonperturbative aspects of quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong force. The author applies these methods to the analysis of weak decay processes and the nonperturbative computation of the weak matrix elements needed for a complete evaluation of these decays in the Standard Model of elementary particle physics.

Experimental results on QCD measurements obtained in recent analyses and based on data collected with CDF Detector from the Run 1b Tevatron running cycle are presented. The scope of the talk includes major QCD topics: a measurement of the strong coupling constant {alpha}{sub s}, extracted from inclusive jet spectra and the underlying event energy contribution to a jet cone. Another experimental object of QCD interest, prompt photon production, is also discussed and the updated measurements by CDF of the inclusive photon cross section at 630 GeV and 1800 GeV, and the comparison with NLO QCD predictions is presented.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act requires agencies to publish compliance guides for each rule or group of related rules for which the agency is required to prepare a final regulatory flexibility analysis. GAO found that Section 212 has had little impact, and its implementation has varied across and sometimes within the agencies. None of the agencies in GAO's review provided GAO with guidance documents that met all of the statutory requirements for all of their 1999 and 2000 final rules. The agencies indicated that they tried to put their compliance guides in plain language--just as they have for all their regulatory materials. The guidance documents that the agencies gave GAO were often published on the agencies' web sites. Direct mail, electronic list servers, agency/regional offices, and workshops were also used for distribution."

The magnet system of the Very Large Hadron Collider (VLHC) Stage I is based on a superconducting 2 Tesla magnetic field combined function magnets. These magnets will have a room temperature iron core with two 20 mm air gaps. Magnetic field in both horizontally separated air gaps is excited by a single turn 100 kA superconducting transmission line. The alternative design with cold iron core, horizontally or vertically separated air gaps is under investigation. The cold iron option with horizontally separated air gaps reduces the amount of iron, which is one of the main cost driver for 233 km length magnet system of the future accelerator. The vertical beam separation decreases volume superconductor, heat load from synchrotron radiation and eliminates fringing field from a return bus. But the horizontal beam separation has lowest volume of iron core and as a result lower heat load for cryosystem during cooling down. All these options are discussed and comparison is made. Superconducting correction system, combined with the magnet, allowing to increase the maximum field is also under discussion. Preliminary cost analysis are made for all options.

This article presents the current experimental results of searches for Supersymmetry (SUSY) at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), using over 110 pb{sup -1} of proton-antiproton collision data with {radical}s = 1800 GeV collected during the period 1992-1995. Since no signal was found, limits on the production of supersymmetric particles are derived. The prospects for supersymmetry searches at Run II of the Tevatron, that began in March 2001, are also discussed here.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

We describe the production, installation and commissioning of the new 792,576 channel D0 Silicon Microstrip Tracker to be used for the 2 fb{sup -1} of the Run IIa at the Tevatron.

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A review of the latest results on charm lifetimes and D-mixing is presented. The e{sup +}e{sup -} collider experiments are now able to measure charm lifetimes quite precisely, however comparisons with the latest results from fixed-target experiments show that possible systematic effects could be evident. The new D-mixing results from the B-factories have changed the picture that is emerging. Although the new world averaged value of y{sub CP} is now consistent with zero, there is still a very interesting and favored scenario if the strong phase difference between the Doubly-Cabibbo-suppressed and the Cabibbo-flavored D{sup 0} {yields} K{pi} decay is large.

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the end of the Cold War, the United States and its European allies are using smaller militaries, disbursing more development assistance, and increasing their reliance on multilateral organizations to provide for European security. Despite reductions in force levels and budgets, U.S. and European military forces have been actively engaged in peacekeeping and other security-enhancing activities in the region. The United States and its European allies have contributed to stability in the Balkans through various military and financial means. The Balkans operations have highlighted numerous shortfalls in the military capabilities of European allies, but competing budgetary priorities may limit their ability to remedy them before the end of the decade. Defense expenditures are expected to remain relatively flat in constant 2000 dollars over the next four to five years for most European allies, placing major defense initiatives sponsored by NATO and the European Union in jeopardy."

PureVision Technology, Inc. (PureVision) of Fort Lupton, Colorado is developing a process for the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into fuel-grade ethanol and specialty chemicals in order to enhance national energy security, rural economies, and environmental quality. Lignocellulosic-containing plants are those types of biomass that include wood, agricultural residues, and paper wastes. Lignocellulose is composed of the biopolymers cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Cellulose, a polymer of glucose, is the component in lignocellulose that has potential for the production of fuel-grade ethanol by direct fermentation of the glucose. However, enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose and raw cellulose into glucose is hindered by the presence of lignin. The cellulase enzyme, which hydrolyzes cellulose to glucose, becomes irreversibly bound to lignin. This requires using the enzyme in reagent quantities rather than in catalytic concentration. The extensive use of this enzyme is expensive and adversely affects the economics of ethanol production. PureVision has approached this problem by developing a biomass fractionator to pretreat the lignocellulose to yield a highly pure cellulose fraction. The biomass fractionator is based on sequentially treating the biomass with hot water, hot alkaline solutions, and polishing the cellulose fraction with a wet alkaline oxidation step. In September 2001 PureVision and Western Research …

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The design of groundwater remediation pump-and-treat well networks under aquifer parameter measurement uncertainty can be addressed using an optimal-design strategy based upon the concept of robust optimization. The robust-optimization approach allows for the admission of design alternatives that do not satisfy all design constraints. However in the selection process the algorithm penalizes such selections based upon the number of constraints violated. The result is a design which balances the importance of reliability with overall project cost. The robust-optimization method has been applied to the problem of groundwater plume containment and risk-based groundwater remediation design. Designs dedicated to groundwater-plume containment assure that the contaminant plume will not extend beyond a prespecified perimeter. Inwardly directed groundwater velocity must be achieved along this perimeter. The outer-approximation optimization technique in combination with a groundwater flow model ( PTC) is used to solve this optimal-design problem.

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A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The United States maintains 100,000 military personnel in Europe to provide rapid response in the event of a military crisis and help shape the international environment. These forward-deployed forces and equipment also facilitate the movement of U.S. forces to an area of operations. DOD has not quantified the impact of a forward presence in Europe on mobility requirements. However, Defense officials believe that, without forward-deployed forces and equipment in Europe, mobility requirements and costs would be considerably higher and deployment times longer, increasing war-fighting risk. The U.S. en-route system of airbases is critical to operations in Europe and Southwest Asia. U.S. prepositioned weapons and equipment in Europe facilitate military operations in nearby areas. Air Force aircraft and personnel deployed in Europe allow forces to move more quickly to small-scale contingencies in the area and reduce the airlift and sealift burden on U.S.-based units. As with the Air Force, Army combat and support units stationed in Europe allow forces to move more quickly and at less cost to small-scale contingencies in the area."